


Who Weeps?

by DaisyNinjaGirl



Series: The Tenner [16]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Metamorphoses - Ovid, Venus and Adonis Myth
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 08:54:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24847147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaisyNinjaGirl/pseuds/DaisyNinjaGirl
Summary: Day Eight - MajestyOne hand, its fingers traced with faint scars, spread over the mortar to guard the powder he was making, faintly smelling of wood and smoke and sweetness. “There is a tale,” he said, “of the myrhh tree. But it is a sad one.”
Relationships: Adonis/Aphrodite (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), Myrrha/Cinyras
Series: The Tenner [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1680610
Kudos: 2
Collections: The Tenner





	Who Weeps?

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: The Non-Con tag is for a non-explicit act of rape by deception/incest consistent with the original canon. But honestly, it’s hard to write a story based on Ancient Greek myths without heading into some seriously hinky territory, so there you go.

_Edward was in the attic. He had found a small sack of myrrh resin and was grinding the golden brown lumps in a deep brass mortar. One hand, its fingers traced with faint scars, spread over the mortar to guard the powder he was making, faintly smelling of wood and smoke and sweetness. “There is a tale,” he said, “of the myrhh tree. But it is a sad one.”_

**Who Weeps?**  
Long ago, poets told a tale that they claimed was a horrible one, that daughters and fathers should hold themselves aloof from or else disbelieve, and further, to believe more strongly in the punishment that followed the sin.

A long time ago there was a girl who fell in love with her father, the king. Are you not shocked? When a man desires his daughter, we sigh and shake our heads, and if we live just lives we punish him - but we are… less surprised than we should be. Even so, here was this girl Myrrha, and she desired her father the king - Cinyras, he was called. Such a desire is unnatural and she knew it well, but she sighed and took to her bed, and swore to her maid that surely she would die. She convinced her maid to help her in the ‘bed trick,’ to fool old Cinyras that some _other_ fine young lady of good birth desired him. Randy old goat that he was, he consented.

We all know the tale of the monster bridegroom who appears only in the dark, who when a candle is brought is found to be beautiful before fleeing forever. When Cinyras wondered who was this fine youthful lady who wanted him so, who reminded him of his own youth, he brought a candle in the night, and his lover was, indeed, beautiful. In his rage he raised his sword to strike his daughter down and she fled from him. In her shame and her penance, young Myrrha walked nine long months through the dry lands of the Arabs, becoming heavier with child every day. On the last day when she could walk no farther, her mouth parched with thirst, the soldiers of her lover and father still pursuing her, weary of life yet terrified of death, she cried out to Aphrodite the goddess of desire to aid her.

It is an old saying for those who are dismayed by their actions: “a god must have put the thought in my head” for the gods of the Middle Sea are capricious and change their minds often. The goddess Aphrodite transformed young Myrrha into a little twisted fragrant tree that split open to reveal the most beautiful baby the goddess had ever seen. She named the baby Adonis, which means Lord, except when it means Perfume, or even Lover. She kept the baby, but shared it with grave Persephone in her dark land for a part of each year. The boy grew and became a man, the most beautiful man, so of course Aphrodite would take him as her lover.

Adonis was fond of the hunt. Bountiful Aphrodite, the postponer of old age, found herself kilting up her gown and running through the woods with her young lover, leaping logs, dodging through the undergrowth and telling the young man who burst with life that by all means _he must be careful_.

Obviously we all know the ending. She found Beautiful Adonis sprawled beneath a tree, a wild pig snorting over the boy, a spreading wound in her lover’s thigh. She wept then as poets weep: for departed beauty, for the fragility of all things, for the idea of the dying god; she wept for worldly cares that Adonis had now left behind him. She wept until her tears and the clotting blood of her lover became the fragile anemone flower, light and frail and quick to die in its beauty.

She weeps, and we weep, for the beautiful Adonis.

But I ask you now - who shall weep for the gnarled and twisted myrrh tree that holds fast in the desert? Who shall weep for a young and silly girl whose tears are fit gift for kings?

_Edward ceased his grinding and poured the fine fragrant powder into a wooden bowl, the better to dry in the sun. He breathed in deeply. “Her tears are beautiful, are they not?”_

**Author's Note:**

> I think I just got to tick my Bingo card for both Major Character Death **and** Non-Con in the same story. Go me, I think?


End file.
